Anything and Everything
by Nugar
Summary: AU It finally happened. Hinata was made heir to the clan, and Hanabi was going to be sealed. Desperate, she promises anything and everything to any man or being who can give her freedom. The Kyubi answers, and a deal is made.
1. Chapter 1

Anything and Everything

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Hanabi kicked hard at the water.

Too hard.

Water sprayed in a sheet out from the sole of her bare foot, and after a short distance, the surface tension would condense it to little spheres. Each droplet randomly sloshed back and forth in slow motion in the heightened vision of her byakugan, as if part of it strained to be free from the rest, yet could not escape.

Thin projections of chakra from the tenketsu in her fingertips slashed through the droplets as her hands moved with blinding speed.

Be free, she thought, her eyes burning with shame and frustration.

But she'd kicked too hard. There were too many big, fat drops of water flying through the air for her to reach them all in time, and with the burning, not quite crying sensation in her eyes growing with each one she missed, Hanabi eventually had to give up on catching the last ones.

She stood still on top of the small pond in the newest, as yet uninhabited section of the Hyuga district, breathing heavily. Water shone on her pale skin in the light of a waning moon, mixing with the sweat of her exertions to fall off her naked body with a rhythmic drip-drip. Hanabi wore nothing at all, following the directions of her sister as she ran through the same practice used to create the Shugo Hakke Rokujuyonshou.

Thinking about her sister brought fresh pain.

Hinata. Blushing, eager to please Hinata.

The heir to the clan.

And she, Hanabi, who had always been praised as the one with real talent, was going to be sealed and placed in the branch family.

She knew it was tradition. Hinata was born first, and they didn't have any brothers, despite how much her mother had tried, was still trying, even. But at this point it didn't matter anymore. Even if her mother did manage to get pregnant again, and it was a boy, the age gap was too great. Hinata would be the new clan leader, and she… she would serve, just like Uncle Hizashi served her father.

Just like her cousin Neji had served Hinata and her. Would still serve Hinata.

The final decision, appropriately enough, had been made after Hinata had demonstrated her new technique, the first she'd ever made, the one Hanabi was now trying to learn.

She hated it.

But it was a good technique. Despite the bitter, hot disappointment that boiled in the pit of her stomach, Hanabi recognized the strength of the technique. For women, especially young girls like her sister and herself, the Kaiten required too much chakra to really be viable, and was also vulnerable to a number of counter techniques in the first motions.

Hinata's technique did not have those flaws, for all that it covered a much smaller area.

So Hanabi practiced.

Alone, in a deserted portion of the growing Hyuga estate, at three in the morning.

Where no one could see the anger and despair written into her every movement.

Damnit!

She was meant for so much more than this!

Had she not learned to walk on water at the age of eight? Was she not the best student of any age in the Academy, beating out even the three Uchiha children?

She was not meant for a life of humble support for her sister!

A wordless cry tore from her lips as she kicked out again, sending more water into the air, which she tore apart with uncommon savagery. Over and over she kicked and slashed, twisted and stepped. Hinata described it as a dance, graceful and free, protecting even as it attacked. What Hanabi created was more like a massacre, brutal and violent.

Finally spent, Hanabi collapsed to her knees in the middle of the pond, then, as her concentration wavered and her chakra ebbed, she slipped deeper and fell backwards, floating nude, just her face and breasts breaking the surface.

For a time all she could do was breathe and fight the urge to scream.

Hyuga did not scream.

They did, however, occasionally pray.

"Please, Kami-sama, Buddha-sama, anyone who will listen…" she whispered quietly, "I'd give anything to be free from my family."

There was silence, marred only by the soft rustle of wind through the leaves.

"**Well now**," a smooth, cultured voice broke in, the tones just a bit too deep to be natural, "**that's an interesting way of putting it.**"

Hanabi whirled, springing to the surface of the water, her hands at the ready. She had no tools, but a Hyuga was never without weapons.

There was a man on the shore. Tall, well built, with blond hair made pale by the moonlight and thin brown slashes on his cheeks, like scars, or birthmarks. He wore a suit, a business suit, impeccably tailored to fit his frame, which shone like well brushed wool.

He wasn't a civilian, though. Only a ninja could be that silent, and stand that still.

"Who are you?!" she demanded, activating her byakugan with a thought. "This is Hyuga land, state your business or leave at once!"

He chuckled, the sound rich and menacing. "**So eager to leave her family, yet so quick to call on its protection. Young girls are always so… contrary.**" His eyes gleamed. "**As to my business, young princess, I could not help but notice that you were upset. I am, by nature, drawn to those in distress.**" He paused just long enough for her to tense, then continued. "**And I heard your prayer. I heard you beg.**" His perfectly even, white teeth gleamed in the faint light. "**I have come to deal.**"

Hanabi gasped and blushed, horrified that her moment of weakness had been witnessed. In a clan of dojutsu users, Hanabi was far more modest about her pain than she was her body.

"Who are you?! Some pervert out here spying on me?! Leave! Leave my family's lands!" she demanded.

The blond man laughed again. "**Ah hah hah! Such a misunderstanding! Do those much vaunted eyes truly see? But yes, a man with an unclothed young girl might be construed as unseemly. Pardon me, I simply felt the form suitable for the occasion. Perhaps something closer to your own age?**" He shrank before her eyes, not even appearing to use hand seals, and his chakra didn't even seem to flicker. He stopped when he was much younger, perhaps around her sister's age, perhaps less. Instead of the dark wool suit, he wore a fine summer yukata, white with elegantly embroidered scenes of running foxes and flowering orchids. He wore it open with one arm out of its sleeve, revealing his bare chest.

Before, she would have sworn he was in his natural form. Now he seemed even more real, if such a thing was possible. Yet, she was equally sure that it, like the one before, was just a veil over something else.

He stalked forward onto the edge of the water, revealing bare feet that rippled the surface as he stepped.

Hanabi backed away, so that the entire pond was between them.

"This should be better," he said, and his voice had changed, becoming lighter and softer. It was still almost musical to the ears, but it no longer had the deep, reverberating tone that had once marked it. "As I said, I heard your plea. And I am here to answer it." He cocked his head slightly in question. "Why do you fight? What could make a young girl train so desperately so late at night?"

"My business is my own," she informed him frostily. "I said leave, before I call the guards."

He shrugged eloquently, his one bare shoulder rippling with the movement. "Actually, I already know your business, I simply wanted you to think about it. You are Hanabi, second daughter of the current head of the Hyuga clan, and you will soon have a seal placed on your forehead that will forever make you a slave of your sister." His voice growled on the word 'slave'. "You have trained because they told you to. You have trained because you hoped that, if you could prove yourself enough, you would be made heir and your sister would be the slave. But you were not strong enough to overcome tradition… and now you train because you have nothing left. No power, no options."

Hanabi opened her mouth, but the strange blond boy cut her off.

"I am here to give you options. I am here to give you strength." He smiled at her, bright as a sunny day.

"I am Hyuga. I am already strong," Hanabi replied, her chin lifting with pride.

"And yet, you were willing to offer anything and everything to anyone that could help, because you know wishes always have a price. You know what you want. You know what you were willing to give in return." He leaned forward and crouched, one hand touching the water as he looked up at her.

"**Deal.**"

"You presume to offer me power? Who are you to interfere in the business of the Hyuga clan?" She tried to remain haughty, but…

He was offering her everything she wanted most. It was almost certainly a trick. A cruel joke of the gods, a lie by an enemy, almost anything but what he said it was. And yet… and yet she listened.

He smiled. Leaned back, took his hand off the water. "Call for a guard," he offered. "You are still of the main family. They will listen." He smirked. "For now."

Warily, never taking her attention from the boy, she did as he bade. "Guard! I need a guard here! Attend me!" she called, projecting her voice loudly.

It was but a few seconds before an older Hyuga man, a jounin, joined her by her side, angled so he faced both her, as was polite, and the blond intruder who claimed so much. He took in her state of undress, the presence of a young boy, and his muscles tightened.

"Hanabi-sama," he answered, bowing his head slightly.

"We have an intruder on the grounds," Hanabi said, gesturing at the boy.

"**An intruder of sorts, yes**," he agreed with a laugh.

Hanabi's eyes widened as her guard, a jounin who had experienced many threats, paled. For the first time, he got a good look at the intruder.

"You…" he breathed.

The Kyubi smiled, gently reminding the man that in many animals, baring the teeth is a threat. "**Yes. Fetch Hiashi. We shall be waiting.**" He noted the hesitation, the moment of insecurity as the man struggled with his desire to do what he was told and his duty to protect the daughter of his leader. Kyubi waved his hand negligently. "**Go. She is safe with me.**" He chuckled at the irony. "**Safer than anyone else in the entire world.**"

Giving his ward one last regretful look, the man hastily disappeared, running as fast as he could to inform his leader of this new and terrible development.

Hanabi took a moment to carefully examine him, slowly letting her defensive stance relax, so that she stood straight. When he didn't react, she cautiously circled him, trying to reach the neatly folded pile of clothes she'd left on the shore.

"Actually, there is something appropriate about you being bare for this meeting," Kyubi said, startling her. "Stripped of the trappings of the clan you are no longer bound to. **Naked before God.**"

She froze in indecision.

"I want you to watch carefully when your father arrives," Kyubi said in a conversational tone. "Watch his eyes. I want you to tell me what you see there." He rolled his head and stood in one smooth, effortless motion. "And I suppose you should have my name. Once, I was supposed to be called Naruto. But you may call me-"

"What are you doing here, Kyubi?!" Hiashi demanded, suddenly appearing on shore between the monster and his daughter. Four of his strongest guards flanked him, all looking grim and apprehensive.

Kyubi glanced at him, then looked back at Hanabi, grinning and showing a lot of teeth. "Timing, as they say, is everything."

Hanabi, true to the order Kyubi had given her, watched her father carefully. She saw the way his hands trembled, his muscles tensed. She saw the way his eyes darted, widening, flicking to her to check her condition, then focusing on the intruder he called Nine Tails.

"Tell me, girl. What do you see in your father's eyes?" Kyubi asked, his tone light.

"Fear," she said in wonder, with a tiny quiver of answering fear that quaked in her gut. Her father, always her strongest protector, was afraid. It shook her world. "I see fear in my father's eyes."

"Damn you, Kyubi! What do you want with my daughter?!" Hiashi demanded, his hands clenched, but not, Hanabi noted, held in the deadly form of a ready juken strike. "There are laws! You made a contract!"

Kyubi smiled and scratched his bare chest lazily. "**I made a new contract.**"

Hiashi's breath sucked in with a hiss, and he looked back to Hanabi, standing there naked, still damp from her dip in the pond.

"What have you done, daughter?" he asked, his voice anguished.

"Very little you should be concerned about, actually," Kyubi replied indifferently. Suddenly, he transformed once again, dropping the fragile illusion of humanity as he fell to all fours, growing and stretching until he was the height of a man at his front shoulders. His face elongated, becoming vulpine, with long slender ears pricked upright, deep red-orange fur, almost black in the night, and nine long, fluffy tails that flicked and danced independent of one another.

"**Except she is now mine, of course,**" the nine tailed fox added with a carnivore's grin.

Someone gasped. Hanabi thought it might have been her.

He really was the Kyubi, spoken of in whispers about the village. The Kyubi that nearly destroyed the village because of manipulation by the traitor Madara Uchiha. The Kyubi that the Hokage had brought to its senses, and made a deal with so that it became a protector of the village… at the cost of the life of his newborn son.

She had made a deal with that Kyubi, the Kyubi that could do anything, but always took a life in payment.

For the first time, she really believed that she would not be sealed and made to serve.

There was a sudden flash of light and a crack of displaced air, and the Hokage appeared, striding forward angrily. "What is the meaning of this?" the Yondaime demanded, staring down the huge fox demon.

The Kyubi gave him a fox like grin and immediately shifted back into the form of a young blond boy, so similar to the legendary hokage that he might well be-

"His son," Hanabi whispered, shocked.

Kyubi spared her a naughty grin before he turned big faux innocent eyes on the Hokage.

"Oh no," he cried, "Daddy-sama is angry with me! Don't hit me, Daddy!" He mock cringed, throwing both hands up as if to ward off a blow as his mouth twisted into a cruel smile.

Minato twitched, but that was the only reaction he would give the demon fox that had killed his son and wore his appearance as a constant reminder.

"This is breaking our deal," the Yondaime warned. "You are not allowed to eat important Konoha citizens, and you are not allowed to trespass on clan grounds!"

"**Mmm, yes… Important citizens, true…**" Kyubi agreed, its voice deepening again as it turned and began a long, slow circle of the Hokage. "**But she is not so important, it seems, that her own family will not make a slave of her.**"

"Our family protects our family. Everyone has duties to the clan, and the clan has duties to everyone," Hiashi countered, but stopped when the Hokage held up a hand.

"She is still an important citizen, and you may not eat her. That is the deal and the contract." Minato's eyes bore into the laughing blue ones of what should have been his son.

Kyubi laughed, genuinely amused. "**The old 'every citizen is important' argument already? Spare me your platitudes.**" He grinned. "**Besides. I never said I wanted her to **_**eat**_**.**"

Hiashi made a strangled noise and would have lunged forward, but his guards had the presence of mind to grab and restrain him.

Kyubi laughed long and hard. "**Ah hah hah! You humans are hilarious! As if I wanted to mate with some underage monkey.**"

Hiashi was able to calm down enough that his guards let him go, though they still watched him carefully. Their job, first and foremost, was to guard him, not his daughter, and even though the Kyubi clearly had no intention of attacking directly, even the Hokage himself couldn't save Hiashi if he attacked it first. It was well known for its love of baiting people into doing just that.

"**No, my dear father…**" Kyubi drawled. "**I have made new deal. A deal with her. And none need fear for her in my presence. She is mine, and under my protection. Let none touch her who wish to live. I will leave her for now, though I will watch, and I will return when she first bloods.**" He stroked his cheek as he looked at her, an odd move for a human, then smiled once again. "**As for the trespassing… Well, my business here is done, and the girl herself ordered me from these grounds.**"

Quick as a wink, the human form was gone and a normal sized fox, albeit one with nine tails, scampered away, only to pause beside a bush.

"You can ground me later, Daddy-sama," he taunted in a childish voice, then disappeared.

There was an immediate rush of quiet words and worried glances, her father talking to the Hokage, the Hokage listening carefully, and the guards spreading out to see if the demon truly had left.

Alone of the group, even as one retainer draped his happi coat around her nakedness and another found her clothes, Hanabi was relieved.

Her prayers had been answered.

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There followed a period of questions. At first, all the adults who question her are scared, which they hide by being stern and angry. Then, as they realized that the Kyubi came to her because she did not want to be sealed into the branch family, the questions became more pointed. Disappointed. Cold.

Furious.

The Hokage stopped and questioned her for a while. She'd met him before, of course, but this was the first time he'd ever really talked to her, or at least, asked her anything. She explained that she'd been out training, and Kyubi had appeared out of nowhere. She hadn't even known she was being watched.

"What did he promise you?" he asked.

Hanabi hesitated a moment. Truthfully, he hadn't directly promised her anything, merely claimed that he accepted the terms of her prayer, and her offer. Somehow, though, she knew that he'd understood everything. She told the Hokage.

"He promised freedom. That I would never be sealed as a branch Hyuga. That no one could ever trap me into a situation I did not wish to be in. That I would never be anyone's slave."

Minato nodded and looked serious. "But he didn't say that, specifically, did he?"

He knew.

Hanabi nodded. "Yes, sir. It was as if he'd already knew what I wanted."

The Hokage looked grim and distant. "Yes, that's how he does it. As if he can see into your heart." He paused and shook his head before returning his attention to her. "What did you promise in return?"

"Anything," she whispered.

"Anything?"

"And everything," Hanabi reluctantly added, fighting the urge to cringe under the man's disappointed stare. "I was desperate."

He sighed, nodded, then gently patted her on the shoulder.

"I know, Hanabi-chan. I know." He stood and prepared to leave, then stopped and turned around to look at her again. "Just, one thing."

"Yes, Hokage-sama?" she asked.

The man's blue eyes were hard.

"He can't read your mind or your heart. Not really."

She blinked.

"Still… he knows more than you would think, for all that. He's evil. He delights in carnage and suffering. Never underestimate him."

"Yes, Hokage-sama," she swore seriously.

But there was one more thing that weighed on her.

"Ano, Hokage-sama?" she asked quickly, before he left.

"Yes? Speak."

"Can I still be a ninja?"

He gave her an unreadable look which even her byakugan training couldn't decipher.

"…we'll see," was all he said.

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Her father and her mother were next in line to sit down and have a talk with her.

Or, mostly a staring contest, at least after Hanabi, in short, concise sentences, explained why she'd been willing to make a deal with the Kyubi and the terms of the deal, basically repeating what she'd told the Hokage, who'd already talked with them.

Her mother frowned a lot and hugged her, radiating motherly concern and disappointed anger in roughly equal amounts. Worry, yes, worry for her daughter. But she was badly shocked that Hanabi would choose some nebulous freedom over duty to her family and clan.

Clearly, she felt as if a stranger had replaced her youngest daughter, someone she couldn't predict at all, and didn't trust in the least.

Her father was much harder to read, but, of course, as the leader of the clan and its strongest protector, he was much better at concealing his thoughts.

He gave her a short speech on responsibility and a few questions about 'do you understand the consequences of your actions?' that were obviously rote, with no real thought put into them.

She replied with appropriate answers, at least as much as she could think of 'right' answers to tell her parents, one of whom was also the leader of the clan she'd basically betrayed.

After an awkward period, they sent Hanabi to bed.

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Her sister came in and cried at her for a while.

Hinata always was a soft heart. Hanabi loved her, but she'd never really respected her, and never been very warm to her, either. She was a rival. A rival who, despite being inferior in every way, had the stronger position simply because of a head start.

And she'd ultimately won.

Now, here she was, obviously not in possession of all the facts, crying and hugging Hanabi and telling her it would be okay. Hanabi let her, of course, sitting on her bed, upright, not blinking very often, as Hinata wrapped her arms around her shoulders and cried so much her neck felt wet even through the cloth of her shirt.

As if that helped.

As if that made Hanabi feel better.

Every now and then, she'd pat Hinata on the back and murmur something soothing and indistinct. It wasn't like she was a monster. She loved Hinata. It was impossible to work up even the smallest bit of hatred for someone so devastated by the thought that a monster was going to come take her away.

Unlike the rest of the family, who were upset because of the loss of face, or anger at Hanabi's rejection of them, Hinata was the only one that Hanabi knew for a fact thought of her first and her position in the family last.

There was something comforting about that.

But then Hinata blindsided her.

She said something that shook Hanabi to the core.

"Why didn't you come to me first?" Hinata asked, sniffling. "If you hated it so much that you would rather run away than be sealed, why didn't you come to me? I would have asked Father to pick you over me." She dabbed at her eyes. "For you, I would have insisted."

Hanabi turned to look at her, astonished.

"I know being sealed is a scary possibility," Hinata continued. "I've worried about it myself, especially since you were always so much better at our arts. But for you, I could have done it. I would gladly have chosen to be sealed than have you taken from us."

Hanabi sat there, stiff and unmoving for several minutes as Hinata looked at her, her pale eyes searching Hanabi's face for any trace of emotion, any clue as to what she was thinking.

Hinata was right, Hanabi realized. If Hanabi had told her that she couldn't stand the idea of being sealed into the branch family, Hinata would have insisted that Hanabi take her place. And… if Hinata had always been weaker, or at least, less talented and less determined, she did have the kind of strength that would have allowed her to survive the loss of prestige and position.

Hanabi did not. She knew she did not, that was why she'd promised anything and everything to the first power that could deliver her from her family.

Hinata saw it in her eyes as Hanabi finally realized that someone loved her so much that she would gladly have sacrificed everything she had just so Hanabi wouldn't have had to make a deal with a demon. She read every emotion, every thought as Hanabi's fragile control over her expression faltered.

And then, Hanabi crawled into Hinata's lap and cried for the last time.

They fell asleep together in the same bed, a memory that Hanabi would secretly cherish for the rest of her life.

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	2. Chapter 2

The next morning was extremely bizarre. Hanabi was keenly aware that nothing would ever be the same again, and yet…

Nothing had changed.

Her sister woke up, hugged her, and got ready for her duties.

Hanabi stood around awkwardly for a while, feeling uncertain. But no one had said that just because she'd betrayed her family by making a deal with the most powerful, most evil being she knew of she didn't have to go to school, even if, somehow, it felt like someone should.

Breakfast was there. That was about all she could say about it. The branch member who cooked for them was low enough in the family hierarchy she hadn't heard of the night's events, but where Hanabi often exchanged at least a few words with other members of her family, today, no one would even look at her.

Her classmates stared at her in school, especially between classes. She'd never been the most social girl around, a combination of her class rank, social standing, and natural inclination had left her with an ice queen reputation, but she'd always spoken with people brave enough to speak to her first. Konohamaru was one such person, since he had considerable social standing of his own and was naturally outgoing, but today, even he had given her a dubious look and shied away.

Her heart had thudded in her chest all day, wondering how they knew. And then around lunch, her teacher, Iruka, had taken her aside and asked if she was okay, or if she needed to see a nurse.

Hanabi had been confused. What did a nurse have to do with the Kyubi?

And then she realized that no one knew anything about her situation, it was she who was different, and her demeanor had been putting off her classmates.

Maybe it was silly of her to expect her classmates at school to somehow know that she'd made a deal with the devil. Maybe nothing had changed.

But she had.

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This was not the first time the Hyuga clan had been involved with the Kyubi. Nearly a decade earlier, Cloud ninja had once came to Konoha, lead by Shinobi Gashira, the head ninja of the diplomatic efforts.

Kyubi had slept through the first several days of the treaty negotiation. Kyubi slept most of the time, actually, both in the form of a young boy and in the form of a fox as tall as a man, usually in a cave he'd called into being at the base of the Hokage monument. It was one of the few things that really kept Konoha safe, since by sleeping for a week at a time he rarely went out to torment the villagers.

When he woke up that time, however, he could sense something different. Konoha and all the lands around it was His territory, and he did not approve of visitors. Most humans didn't register to him, civilians because they were like ants, beneath his notice, and ninja were little better, but also more stealthy. Konoha's trade and steady stream of visitors were allowed to continue unmolested.

But these ninja smelled different. They had a mix of auras clinging to them, residue from beings that, while not as powerful as him, were at least of the same kind, and therefore rivals to chase or kill.

The humans weren't his rivals, merely toys, but they smelled like them. It made him irritable and restless.

So he prowled, always staying just out of reach of the pathetic human senses of the foreign ninja. For two days, that was all he did, stalking them with the patience of all his kind. They stayed in a designated guest house for distinguished visitors, and only left when they were accompanied by locals. Carefully guided tours as a show of faith, restaurants, and many, many meetings with the one he'd made a deal with.

Kyubi did not eat during that time, not even when the smells of cooking human food nearly drove him to distraction. Hunger whetted the senses, and there was no better spice to a good hunt.

All ninja were furtive, but these Cloud ninja were especially suspicious, always testing the limits of their freedom, the quality of the surveillance placed over them. What was more, there were more of them lurking in the forests outside of Konoha, interestingly not accompanied by local ninja.

Human plots were in motion.

Kyubi grinned, showing sharp, white teeth in all his forms.

The ninja in the forests were not covered under the deal he'd made with the blond human. He would be well in his rights to kill them, and he would, eventually, but his Hunt was already in motion, and he'd focused on the ones that were protected from him, the ones in Konoha. What fun was it to kill the defenseless?

Finally, his patience was rewarded, as it always was.

One of the Cloud ninja, their leader by the smell of him, slipped through the net of surveillance around them. Kyubi neither noticed or cared the details of how the humans had been fooled. Kyubi only cared that finally, one of them was leaving the security guaranteed by the bargain with the blond human.

Like a rabbit sticking its nose out of a burrow, Gashira slipped into town. As long as he was still in public places, by the letter of the agreement, he was still untouchable. Minato chose to err on the side of caution when it came to allowing the Kyubi to kill people.

It was not a problem. Kyubi shifted into the form of a normal sized fox with nine tails and slipped in and out of shadow as he paced Gashira. The man wasn't exceptionally tall, but he was heavily built, and dressed in drab ninja clothes. The most notable thing about him was that he wore his hitai ate down at an angle over his right eye, presumably covering up an empty socket.

The Cloud ninja had a definite destination in mind, only deviating when necessary to avoid patrols. He made for the Hyuga clan estates.

The moment he stepped over the invisible line on the road that marked the start of Hyuga owned lands, Kyubi was on him, increasing his size until his shoulder was equal with the man's head as he pounced, flattening Gashira to the ground with both paws, yet careful not to break any bones.

He could have toyed with the man more, let him get even closer to thinking he'd succeeded, but the Hyuga had notoriously high security and he would not share this prey with anyone.

"Whhaaa-" Gashira protested in shock. It'd been a long time since he'd been caught completely flat footed like that, and with his skills and level of alertness he had not expected to be taken down out of nowhere. He drew breath to curse his attacker even as Kyubi rolled him over-

And Kyubi shrank in size to little more than a large dog, his head darting forward and neatly nipping out the man's Adam's apple.

Blood flowed, but not excessively, Kyubi's narrow jaws and sharp teeth missed the major blood vessels, and in an instant he'd stolen Gashira's ability to speak… and scream. His breath gasped out through the hole where his voice box had been, unable to make any sound other than the rush of hot air and slight splutter of blood at the new end of the trachea.

Kyubi shifted to the form of a young boy, perhaps five or six, and blond like the Hokage, yet wreathed in red chakra that clearly outlined that of his equivalent fox form with nine tails. He quite liked taking this form and reminding the blond human what he'd sacrificed. Humans were also easily disturbed by other humans doing unnatural things, and the Kyubi wasn't natural in any sense of the word.

Despite his reduction in size and weight, Gashira still found himself pinned by incredible force, unable to move his hands and feet even a fraction of an inch. He flinched, his eyes wide as the demonic child leaned forward, bringing his face in close and sniffing several times, twisting to look at him from several angles. Gashira's sole eye stared back at him in alarm.

Then Kyubi extended his tongue and slowly licked up the side of Gashira's face, his evil chakra somehow peeling away or dissolving the top layer of skin and fat of the left side of his cheek, burning the flesh away like acid. Gashira tried to scream at the pain, but his breath just rushed out the hole in his throat.

"**This taste…**" Kyubi said slowly, licking his childish lips and smacking thoughtfully, "**is of spy.**"

Gashira tried to scream again, but without the vocal chords to provide back pressure, all he could do was hyperventilate.

"**So, Shinobi Gashira,**" Kyubi said thoughtfully, his red eyes bright. "**You came here to steal a pair of Hyuga eyes, did you not? Using the treaty as cover to get in close. So clever you thought you were. Tsk tsk.**" He shook his head sadly, as if disappointed by the human's antics.

Gashira thrashed his head back and forth, but to no avail. Despite missing a layer of flesh as wide as a child's tongue and about four inches long, his face didn't bleed, somehow cauterized by the chakra that burned it.

"This is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me," Kyubi added thoughtfully. Then, with a slash of his hand, tore the leg of the human's pants into shreds, including the holsters and supportive bandages below, baring pale, untanned skin. Ninja often had excellently toned legs, and they relied heavily on them for movement. Kyubi liked to start there.

The first lick was more than a foot long, starting in mid thigh and continuing down just past the knee, and the skin and muscle boiled away into his mouth like warm steam. Gashira struggled and gasped, but to no avail. Kyubi settled down to feed.

The Cloud ninja's left calf was down to bare bone, and the back of his knee had been bitten away on the right, effectively hobbling him, when one of the Hyuga guards finally noticed.

Hiashi Hyuga, the young clan head, appeared moments later.

Gashira's eye rolled in its socket as he lifted his head and shot a helpless look at the Leaf ninja.

'Help me,' he mouthed.

Kyubi ignored the byplay, neatly tearing out a single fiber of muscle with his small, sharp teeth and slurping it like a noodle.

Hiashi's breath hissed inward. "Kyubi!"

Kyubi's head twisted around in a sinuous motion. "**He has forfeited his protection. I am within my rights.**"

Hiashi had no trouble piecing together the motivations. Lacking any other option, he bowed shallowly and disappeared, sending for the Hokage at once.

"Leaf ninja are so annoying," Kyubi said with a chuckle. "It's so hard to have a quiet dinner without them interrupting." Then he bit through the ninja's ankle for the marrow inside.

Gashira gasped in agony as the demon fed. Kyubi seemed to have an intimate knowledge of the human body, and never severed any nerves prematurely. He rarely bit and chewed, either, preferring to lick at the man like a cat with a bowl of cream, or a child with a popsicle, each stroke of his tongue dissolving a little more of the ninja.

He had no idea how long he lay there as more and more of his arms and legs was melted away. He faded in and out of consciousness, passing out from the pain for merciful minutes and then waking back up again with a scream as the demon child found a new nerve to burn. He didn't notice when the Hokage showed up, nor did he understand the brief conversation that passed back and forth.

He only barely noticed that something was different when Kyubi shifted back to the form of a fox the size of a bear and picked him up by his neck, the ruined splinters of bone that were once his feet still dragging the ground as Kyubi trotted proudly through the village.

He didn't notice when they arrived in the middle of a tense meeting between the Cloud and Leaf, or how his labored breathing came as a shock to his comrades after the Kyubi spit him to the floor.

And mercifully, he didn't notice the shuriken flung by one of his subordinates that severed his spine and ended his suffering.

Kyubi shrank back into the form of a young, naked child and sat on the corpse's chest in between the two rival ninja groups with supreme unconcern. Sure, he could have torn a few more hours of agony from the man before his eventual death, but his new body was still young and got full quickly. This meeting promised to have new amusements for him.

Or, he'd thought it would. This means war, blah blah, cooler heads, whatever, provoked first, endless accusations. He listened with one ear cocked, but frankly, humans killing humans wasn't all that impressive. The Cloud delegation blustered the most, aware that if the meeting truly went south they wouldn't leave alive. He was tempted to go kill their reinforcements just out of boredom, but he couldn't stop yawning. Now that he'd eaten, he was sleepy again, and he didn't want to miss a week of carnage while he took a nap even if it was just prey on prey fights.

Bored, he ripped Gashira's head off and held it up, two fingers and a thumb supporting it, and the other two fingers jammed into the underside of the jaw.

"What's wrong, little Cloud ninja? You look unwell," he said in a quiet, sing song voice.

"Yes, I've lost a lot of weight recently," he answered himself in a faux gruff voice, making the jaw flap up and down as he did so. "I think something I disagreed with ate me."

"Oh, well let me take your temperature." Kyubi licked the corpse's head slowly, exposing bone suddenly bleached white and crumbling. "Hmm, you seem chilled. Maybe you're anemic-"

"We do not have to put up with this insult!" one of the Cloud ninja said, shaking with barely suppressed fury. "You've killed someone here to negotiate a treaty without a shred of evidence against him! There will be war between our villages! Honor must be satisfied!"

Kyubi turned and raised one blond eyebrow at the man.

"Oi! I've got a bone to pick with you!" he said in his Gashira voice, making the jaw move. "You were the one to kill me! I could have survived that, you know. I'm tough. And stringy. And my crotch stank, so Kyubi wasn't going to eat all of me!"

"Heyyy, that's right!" Kyubi said in his normal child voice. "They were the ones who actually killed you, weren't they? You've killed a man here to negotiate a treaty without a shred of evidence against him! Don't worry, we'll avenge you, Shinobi Gashira! This will be war between our villages!" He grinned, showing a lot of teeth. "That'd be irony, right? Delicious, delicious irony."

Kunai were drawn and ninja leapt to their feet, each side poised on a hair trigger to attack the other, the ninja Kyubi had addressed restrained only by his teammates.

Kyubi casually took a bite out of the skull and tossed it aside, chewing thoughtfully as he mentally reviewed what he knew about the Cloud delegation. Swallowing, he stood up and stretched lazily, back arched and hands thrown high and back.

"Well, I guess it's time to face the music," he said almost regretfully, turning to the Hokage. "Well, Daddy-sama, I suppose this is all my fault for attacking him without provocation. I'll accept any punishment you see fit to mete out. You want to spank me now, or later?"

The Hokage didn't so much as twitch, his eyes fixed on the Cloud ninja.

"Hah! I was just kidding," he barked with a laugh. "I've only been here for what, half a dozen years? You're all so sanctimonious you're boring." He turned to the Cloud and grinned. "Tell you what. I'm up for a change of scenery. How about you take me as your prisoner, drop the whole 'war' thing, and call it even? I hear you've got a different attitude towards jinchuriki in your village, I'm curious if that's true. All these Konoha people do is run and scream when I so much as show my teeth."

Behind him, he could sense the blond human's eyes widening in alarm. He tried not to gloat too much.

The Cloud ninja looked at him with contempt. "Be aware, monster, we have ways of controlling even one such as yourself."

He shrugged. "Sure, whatever, eat your heart out. What's a few decades prisoner to me? I've slept longer than that without realizing."

"I will not allow such a thing," Minato said gravely, slamming his hand down on the table.

Kyubi grinned at him. "Oh, but you have to. It's the only way to avoid a war."

The Hokage wavered.

"Right boys?" the being that should have been his son asked, turning back to the Cloud. "Are you willing to trade war right now for war later? I would quite like to come back and raze this village to the ground one day." He cocked his head sideways. "Dare you try to contain me? Dare you not try?" He grinned again.

They dared to try.

Later that night, long after the Kyubi had been lead away in chains and seals and under the guard of Cloud's best, Kushina, wife of the Hokage, found her husband sitting in a chair in their kitchen alone, drinking warm sake at entirely too fast a rate.

"Dear…" she said hesitantly. Minato was not a drinker, and rarely ever let the stresses of the job truly get to him.

"I killed a village today," he said bleakly, and would explain no more.

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	3. Chapter 3

Hanabi woke up with blood in her pajamas one day, only months after the deal with the Kyubi. She'd aced human biology along with everything else she'd ever done, so the event was not quite the personal horror it might have been, though the textbooks hadn't quite prepared her for how yucky she felt. The Hyuga domestic arrangements being what they were, the entire clan knew within hours.

She was not at all prepared for the reaction of her family. It was like the morning after she'd made a deal with Kyubi all over again.

_I will return when she first bloods._

Oh. Oh yeah. _That._

Her father kept her home that day. She was no longer a member of the clan, and yet it had been made clear to her that she was still considered family. So she drank herbal tea and waited. Read a little. Ran through her forms.

And again the next day.

And the day after.

Lacking any real reason to keep her around any longer, she was sent back to school on the fourth day after her first period.

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"She must be sealed."

"Are you a fool? The Kyubi would kill us all!"

"Indeed. Breaking a deal with a demon, or causing one to be broken, is not a wise decision."

"Nevertheless, she must be sealed. I can think of many reasons a demon such as Kyubi would want an unsealed Hyuga girl, and none of them are good for the clan."

"It said it had no interest in her as a sexual partner. And it did not return when she had menarche."

"It said it had no interest in her while she was underage. We all feared that it was simply waiting for menarche, since she has drawn blood in combat already, and many times since, but when you think about it, what does the Kyubi care about?"

"Death."

"Destruction."

"Quite so. We could keep her here and forbid her from killing anyone, but I have no doubt the Kyubi would work around that eventually."

"While I agree that letting a demon have an unsealed daughter of the main house can only bring disaster, I fail to see how enraging the Kyubi to the point it kills our entire clan is any better."

"Sometimes you have to betray the clan to serve the clan."

"…no. That's insane."

"What else is our purpose? We are old. Redundant. This is our last chance to be of major service."

"He has a point. Why should we lose all, when we can give all? I'd rather not sit around and watch whatever new horrors the demon conjures while my arthritis gets worse."

"Are you honestly proposing that we betray the clan? That we have our names stricken from the records and our ashes scattered in the wind, forever in dishonor?"

"Yes. The demon's plans must never succeed."

"We will die screaming."

"And yet, she must be sealed."

"…do I at least get to tell Hiashi what I think of him before I die?"

"That seems only fair."

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Hiashi looked down at the branch elder, a third cousin once removed, he believed, who bowed low before him, as befitted his position.

"You may speak," he announced.

The old man opened and closed his mouth several times in succession, working his tongue in a mouth suddenly gone dry. Then, after a deep breath, he straightened as much as his bent spine would allow, and looked Hiashi in the eye.

"It has been an honor to serve under you, Hiashi-dono. But there's one thing I'd just like you to know before I go."

Hiashi closed his eyes and nodded.

"You're a jerk, Hiashi. A complete kneebiter." And then the old man turned and walked out of his lord's presence for the very last time.

Hiashi stood there with one eyebrow raised, the Hyuga equivalent of jaw on floor amazement and shock.

Well. That was unexpected.

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The first thing Hanabi did when she got home from the Academy was carry her bag full of scrolls and books to her room. Because of chakra limitations and the rules the family had instilled in its members to deal with privacy, Hanabi did not use her byakugan inside her home. She was trained to use other senses to always keep watch, but given the branch house guards and the human limitations on exactly how many hours a day someone could be paranoid, she was not always as diligent as she might have been.

A pity, since the three old men who suddenly assaulted her as she slid open the door to her room were quite past their prime, and if she'd just paid more attention to the faint, cloying smell of mothballs which seemed to hang around one of them she would have been fast enough to evade, gain distance, and use their branch seals against them.

Bony hands, arthritic but calloused and hard with use, grabbed her wrists and pinched the nerves with a spike of pain. Large feet, flat from many years of running, pinned hers to the ground. Her very breath was stolen with a sharp juken blow to the chest and a lighter tap on her throat.

Hanabi was disabled and rendered mute in less than a second.

"Hurry, we won't have long.," one of the branch elders hissed as she was unceremoniously dumped on her bed. "Hiashi-dono will return soon and we at least want to get away from the compound before the Kyubi finds us. His rage will not be precise."

One elder climbed on top of her and pinned her down with his full weight, her hands at her side.

Other girls in her position might have first reacted with a fear of rape, but not Hanabi. Her arms strained as she tried to reach up and protect her forehead, rage and shock warring within her system. How dare they, how dare they!

The other two elders pulled out a bent wooden tool with a single needle sticking out of it at a right angle, and the other uncapped several jars of unguents that Hanabi knew, when mixed with chakra in the recipient's flesh, would turn green.

Her voice was coming back already, and she groaned faintly as she saw the needle dipped in the first component.

The man on top of her spoke quietly.

"Listen, girl. We're just like you, now. We've betrayed the clan and been cast out. But we still have our duty, as do you. You must be sealed."

"Nnnnuuuh," she protested, shaking her head back and forth, but her ears and hair were seized in a grip like iron.

"If you're lucky, getting sealed will invalidate the contract, and you will owe Kyubi nothing. Try to think of that. And… one last time, forgive us, Hanabi-sama. You were always the brightest star of the main family. We apologize for our rudeness."

The entire side of the house was pulled away and casually tossed aside.

"**I don't think an apology is going to be sufficient in this case**," Kyubi told them seriously.

If ever there was a way for a hundred foot tall demonic fox with ridiculously long ears and nine tails each twice as long as it was to look unhappy, this was it.

Hanabi rolled her eyes wildly, looking at the Kyubi.

_You said you could prevent this. We had a deal._

Kyubi shrank down into the form of a teenage boy in a fox print kimono and strode forward, every move speaking of barely contained rage.

"I gave my word that she would not be sealed," the young man said tightly, his fists clenched. "**ARE YOU TRYING TO BREAK OUR DEAL?**" he roared.

Hanabi thought, at the time, that the world had exploded. Never had she felt such rage, such power, such a will to kill. Later, she realized that the world hadn't exploded, but the three men holding her down certainly had, covering her in a fine spatter of blood and lymph, but otherwise leaving her unharmed.

Her bedroom was not so lucky, the things closest to the men simply bursting into flames and disintegrating from the force of the Kyubi's rage, and things farther away being smashed into splinters in the resulting explosion. The entire house was shaken off its foundations and pushed backwards nearly six feet.

Across Konoha, birds took flight, frogs hid at the bottom of pools, dogs howled, cats screamed, babies cried, and people cowered in terror, for the Kyubi was back in all its rage.

Hanabi marveled at the Kyubi's power, and yet it flowed around her, leaving her untouched and unharmed.

After all, she would not have made a deal with a being who would casually hurt her. Anything and everything had its limits. She knew it, and the Kyubi knew it as well.

It took some moments for the Kyubi to calm down, only to immediately fly back into a, fortunately briefer, rage when it realized that the humans that had dared to try and break its deal with the girl had been killed far quicker than what would have truly quenched its anger.

There were no more people around it was allowed to kill. The three humans had been declared missing nin and traitor, misguided adherents to a path that would have destroyed their entire clan in their efforts to enforce the status quo on one rebellious girl.

Hizashi had been quick to point that out, with supporting documentation, when he had approached the Kyubi in its cave and woken it with news from Hiashi that rogue elements had staged a plot to seal Hanabi against the Kyubi's wishes.

Hizashi survived the experience. He supposed he owed his brother a coke.

"**FINE. I suppose I owe you a favor for alerting me to this foolish attempt to break a demon's word.**"

Hiashi bowed before the demon, currently a thirty foot tall fox sitting in his yard growling aimlessly. Hanabi sat to one side, the same distance from both of them.

"**So what is your desire? A summoning contract? Long life? Your enemies' hearts?**" The Kyubi's eyes narrowed with a shrewd intelligence, suspecting that Hiashi might have arranged all this just so he would owe the man.

"You owe me no favor. This, I did for Hanabi," Hiashi replied after a moment.

The Kyubi's head jerked up, as if stun by a fly. It had not expected, or even considered such a response. Everyone wanted something from it. Everyone.

"**Nevertheless, I owe you a favor. I cannot break the contract with your daughter, but anything else in my power is yours to have.**" It paused. "**Once**."

He raised his head again. "Very well then. I ask that any favor you owe to me be passed to my daughter, Hanabi, with whom you have a contract with. Though she is no longer of our clan, she is still my daughter."

Kyubi cocked its head sideways and looked at him, for a moment startled out of its rage. It blinked, then snarled. Orchids, lovingly tended by Hyuga gardeners, withered and died.

"**It is done.**" The vulpine head turned to regard Hanabi. "**What favor would you ask of me**?"

Hanabi blinked. Thought for a moment, then bowed towards the Kyubi. "I will consider it and let you know."

Kyubi barked a fox laugh, and then was simply gone.

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"You planned all this," Hanabi stated, looking at her father as she docilely followed him back to the ruins of the house. It was not a question.

"Yes."

"Why?" That one question had nagged at her ever since the three elders had grabbed her. In her heart, she knew her father was behind it all, at first, believing that he had decided she must be sealed after all, then, realizing that he had arranged for her rescue at the same time.

Hiashi paused.

Hanabi did as well.

He turned, then knelt, putting himself eye to eye with her in a way he hadn't done since she was a very young child, when he would hold her up and look her in the face.

"My daughter, my beloved daughter, I would have sacrificed more than you could possibly imagine if that was what it took to arm you with the one weapon the Kyubi is vulnerable to."

She stared at him, her pale eyes unblinking, missing no detail of his face.

"The human heart," he said simply.

She hesitated. "I do not understand," she admitted.

He patted her head awkwardly, then suddenly changed his mind and pulled her into a hug. "Neither does he, Hanabi-chan," he said, suddenly holding her at arm's length, his eyes searching her face for understanding, eyes that glimmered with unshed tears. "For all his power, for all his knowledge, for all his rage and his cunning, neither does he. Learn this lesson well, my daughter. It is the last thing I can give you."

She blinked, very slowly, then inclined her head. "Thank you, Father." She nearly choked on the words, though formal lines had always came easily to her.

He released her and climbed to his feet, regaining his composure with dignity and grace. "You must leave now. Speak to no one. Go to the Hokage's tower, he will be waiting for you with orders and a new posting far from here. Congratulations on your graduation from the Academy, the youngest allowed in two decades. Your duties await, genin of Konoha."

"Yes, Father." She bowed low, then did as she was bade. Her banishment was complete now.

"Always remember that your family loves you," Hiashi whispered as she ran to meet the Hokage.

She left destruction, death, and heartache behind her, carrying with her only the clothes on her back, dishonor, and the precious insight her father had arranged for her to see into the way the Kyubi could be beaten at its own game.

She also gained something else, something else even her father didn't know.

Hanabi now understood something of just what the Kyubi wanted from her in return.

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"Welcome, fools and fuck ups, to your new posting in Hell," their jounin-supervisor announced with sadistic glee as the wagon train, loaded down with supplies and guarded by weary chunin who'd managed to either be barely competent at their duties or extremely proficient at pissing off superior officers, or both, as well as one newly minted genin unsure of her place in the new world.

The new world consisted of a half ring of buildings built along the rim of an enormous crater in the ground more than a mile across. Anko's moniker of 'Hell' was appropriate enough, as the bottom of the crater was completely obscured by smoke, and the stench of sulfur and brimstone lay heavy in the air, while everything was coated in a light dusting of ash. Faintly, just at the edge of hearing, Hanabi almost thought she heard screams of agony coming from the bottom of the pit, but surely that was just a trick of her imagination.

"I'm Anko Mitarashi," she continued with a mocking bow, which displayed cleavage the discouraged, weary men didn't bother to appreciate. "I'm second in charge to your new lord and master Kakashi, Jounin-Commander of this shithole. He's the laid back one, I'm the one that actually gets shit done. You can call me bitch behind my back, I don't mind, but if you say it to my face I'm taking your balls. Or ovaries, whatever." She paused, getting a good look at Hanabi. "Wait, why is the Hyuga prodigy riding in on the fuck up train?"

Hanabi was waiting for this. She had her order scroll ready, and passed it over to Anko. Loudly, so everyone within earshot could hear plainly, she spoke. "Because I dishonored my clan by making a deal with Kyubi so I would not be sealed into the branch family. I am no longer Hyuga, I am a traitor to my family and bound to serve the Kyubi's will, also, I am protected by the Kyubi's will. Meanwhile, I am a genin of Konoha, and I am reporting for duty, Mitarashi-san."

"Holy shit," Anko breathed, reading the orders, then again, because she didn't believe it the first time. She stared down at the tiny little ex-Hyuga girl in sheer amazement.

Hanabi, her introductory speech complete, stood patiently, not flinching under the shocked stares and mutters her announcement had caused.

"Okay, yeah, I can see that you belong here, now," Anko admitted, rolling up the scroll and storing it in one of the pockets of her duster. "Welcome, then, to the village founded by the Kyubi itself, The Village Hidden in the Smoking Hole in the Ground!"

As if on cue, the wind shifted, bringing a fresh wave of sulfur and brimstone, and now, more clearly, screams could definitely be heard coming from the bottom of the crater.

As an aside, she added, "On official paperwork it's still called The Village Hidden in the Clouds, though. Something to do with appeasing the Lightning Daimyo. We just call it Hell."


	4. Chapter 4

The former village hidden in the Clouds was just about as unpleasant a posting as a Konoha ninja could get. However, not all of the people assigned to it were there as punishment, as it was still an economically and strategically important area. Kakashi Hatake, jounin commander of the refounded village, was widely recognized as the genius protégé of the forth Hokage. And although there were those in Konoha who didn't fully trust Anko Mitarashi, no one called her incompetent and she was well regarded enough to be first pick for Kakashi's second in command. Likewise, there were plenty of good, competent ninja who had been reassigned there, hard men and women who filled in the gap left by the slaughter of almost the entire Cloud population. Men and women who, despite being ultimately loyal to Konoha, ran missions and guarded for the nobles and samurai of Lightning.

True, the place was unpleasant. Sulfurous fumes and occasional, just on the edge of hearing, screams of agony from the crater would unnerve anyone, but Cloud had originally been founded in a fairly nice spot and the heavy fog that tended to blanket the area in the morning did a good job of suppressing the fumes, at least until the bright sun burned it away.

No, oddly enough, it had been Kakashi's best friend, Gai, who had inadvertently started the place's reputation as a place to send fuck ups.

Not that Gai had made any sort of mistake, oh no. Gai was legendary in his own right. No, Konoha started sending problem ninja there after Gai started a training program for the satellite village. Originally Gai had actually been considered for Jounin Commander's spot, but people had rapidly realized that shuttling him back and forth between the two villages was a great way to give everyone the occasional break from the antics of the Blue Beast. So instead he spent nine months out of the year running difficult ops for the village and training the stationed ninja into the ground, and three months running missions for Konoha and pursuing his own pastimes. Which mostly involved running Konoha ninja into the ground with training. Of course, his one and only genin team followed him pretty much everywhere, especially Lee, though both Neji and Tenten were often called away to lead their own teams, and even Lee was being assigned more and more duties involving training the next generation in taijutsu.

Hanabi was only vaguely aware of all this. Crater village, the popular Konoha name for it, was just this place Neji went to a lot.

She supposed she should have known that, immediately after her exile, her father would have set up someone to keep an eye on her.

However, she certainly could have hoped for someone other than her older cousin.

Hanabi stared back at the young man, jounin and subordinate to Anko, as she stood in the hall outside his office, unblinking and unbowed, her face completely neutral, only the faintest of indications in the lean of her posture that she expected hate and scorn and was resigned to not being able to do anything about it.

Neji looked down at her, his face impassive. "So… this is defiance."

A thousand thoughts ran through her head. She had never treated Neji with much kindness. Neji took his duties as guardian of the main clan seriously, something impressed upon him by his father, whom Hanabi understood to have had quite a bit of resentment towards his twin brother when he was younger before committing himself to his position. No one is quite as fanatical as the ones who convert the hard way.

Neji had always been slightly scornful of how long Hanabi had managed to go without being sealed. It was, obviously, her place to support her sister as Neji did. But as long as Hanabi enjoyed the perks of being main family, she wasn't going to tolerate insubordination from a mere branch member.

She didn't expect someone who'd just blindly accepted his role in life to understand the need she had to break the destiny assigned to her.

But instead of saying so, she said nothing. Neji was a jounin, a field commander, and of a respected noble clan. Hanabi was now a clanless genin, and a new assignment. There was nothing for her to say.

"Tenten will be your team leader. Report to her at the armory, the green building on the west edge." He paused. "And don't look into the crater."

"Yes," she replied, bowing, then walked away.

So she would report to Tenten, who reported to Neji, who mostly reported to Anko and Kakashi but would no doubt be sending a few extra reports home. This had been planned extensively.

Hanabi paused briefly at the thought.

Home. No, not home anymore.

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About a week later, Hanabi reported in late for her duties one morning, the first time she'd been anything less than perfect. When she did finally, belatedly, catch up to Tenten and her other teammates, she was pale and distracted, apologizing for her lateness with a kind of barely there acknowledgement of wrongdoing that would have infuriated any other team leader.

Tenten, however, merely sighed and ignored it, limiting herself to a few curt orders to wake up and pay attention.

Neji smirked in a self satisfied sort of way when she reported the incident that evening.

"I told her not to look," he said simply.

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Hanabi made no friends in her new posting. She could work with her teammates, but she was a replacement for a member who'd been reassigned as a student of advanced metal crafting back in Konoha, and the other two already had a relationship built on rivalry and attraction that she had no interest in becoming a part of. Huei and Ryoko were both first generation ninjas and fairly talented at ninjutsu, and both aspired to be known for their creative invention of new techniques.

Hanabi could see how Tenten manipulated them into competing with each other, spotting the tells with almost contemptuous ease, which had her questioning both her squad leader's taste in jokes and her teammate's sanity, since they seemed completely oblivious to it all. Tenten's occasional wink in her direction after a blatantly loaded comment had the two squabbling over ephemeral ego points clearly showed she expected Hanabi to find it all amusing. Hanabi, for her part, found it irritating more than anything else. It was obvious they liked each other, but they spent more time hurting each other's feelings and being frustrated than enjoying each other's company. Hanabi just wanted to paralyze both of them with a few nerve strikes and lock them in a closet until they kissed and got it out of their system.

Informing Tenten of her opinion on the matters, in clinical detail, didn't give the result she'd hoped for. After she'd stopped laughing, big, heartfelt chuckles and utterly unashamed at her display of emotion, Tenten picked her right off the ground in a hug and told her she was just the cutest thing ever.

Hanabi stopped being mortified after about a week, unless she remembered it again, which would cause an angry blush to light up her cheeks despite her best efforts.

What was, in some ways, even worse, was how both Huei and Ryoko both cornered her in private and vehemently denied liking the other. Hanabi had to listen to a long list of personality faults so self evident as to be criminal. Apparently, being a pootyhead was a valid reason to die alone and unloved.

There was some consolidation to those incidents, though. Hanabi had the raised incredulous eyebrow and deadpan Hyuga stare down to an art. She didn't even have to say the words 'self delusion' to make them stammer into embarrassed self doubt and run away. The look said it all.

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Missions varied but usually involved patrolling. Konoha had split off a fairly large portion of its strength to make up for the gaping military void the loss of Cloud caused, and had to make a number of concessions in other territory to prevent the other villages from banding together to take out the new tyrant.

Fortunately for Konoha, both Stone and Sand had recently been defeated and Mist had a couple of bloody revolutions and purges, eventually splitting a significant portion of its ninja into a new village much as Konoha did. The new Village Hidden in the Surf in the Land of Waves was a fairly small village, even smaller than Waterfall, but quickly gained a reputation for violently protecting its newly created sphere of influence.

Unlike Crater, Surf was actively hostile to its originating village, but it also enjoyed more local support than the Konoha ninja did. The Lightning nobles and associated samurai publically bemoaned their sudden reliance on Konoha and the loss of their loyal Cloud ninja, and made many backroom deals with ninja from the other villages, especially the new Surf ninja. Far from losing prestige and influence, they actually solidified their position with a web of favors and promises.

Konoha responded with patrols, 'for the safety of Lightning's rulers', capturing any trespassing ninja not fast or sneaky enough to get away.

Hanabi, naturally, excelled at her job. With her byakugan and a style as suited to paralysis as it was to injury, she had four captures to her credit within the first three months, and received a commendation from Kakashi himself.

It was a little chibi version of himself giving the thumbs up, and drawn on a bar napkin, but it was a commendation and was filed as such.

One morning not long after that happened, Hanabi woke up in her one room apartment to find the Kyubi sitting in the room's sole chair, staring at her with unblinking eyes that flickered red in the predawn light. He was in the guise of a rank and file chunin, with a green armored vest and dark pants, but his forehead was bare and his blond hair combed neatly.

"Kyubi," she acknowledged quietly, sitting up in her bed. She wore plain yellow pajamas a few sizes too big for her, though she'd added a few stitches here and there to make them wearable. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there weren't a lot of shops that carried things sized for someone of her age in the village known as Hell.

He cocked his head at her. They stared silently at each other for several minutes.

"Huh. I thought you might be trying to capture them instead of kill them to keep from drawing my attention."

Hanabi's head tilted slightly, puzzled.

Kyubi laughed and shook his head. "Never mind. How are you liking my village?"

Hanabi wrinkled her nose. "I don't like the smell of sulfur."

He smiled in response. "It's traditional, you see, and quite necessary. Would you like a tour? I could show you the bottom of the crater."

Hanabi paled. "I've… seen it."

Kyubi grinned proudly. "Hyuga _always_ look," he said smugly.

Hanabi just stared at him.

He cocked his head slightly, then stood in one swift motion. "Well, even if you don't want a tour, I still have something to show you. Follow me."

Pausing only long enough to slip her bare feet into her shoes, Hanabi did so, as he was clearly in no mood to suffer an argument. As she started to follow him out the door of her little apartment, he shifted almost instantly to the form of a nine tailed fox the size of a large dog, and flicked three of his tails at her, each one brushing lightly across her stomach.

And then he was off, running through the streets. Hanabi had to work hard to catch up with him after she closed the door behind her, but he was running at a speed she could match without strain once she did.

Hanabi noticed without surprise that they seemed to slip invisibly among the people moving in the early morning darkness, and even the guards at the gate didn't notice as they ran by no more than a dozen meters away. The Kyubi came and went as he pleased, after all.

They soon left the village and entered the wilds around it. Cloud had been founded in a high mountain valley, where the actual clouds had been forced into the channel between the mountains and often blanketed everything in fog. It was a rocky and often steep climb, but the main road was in excellent repair and not overly difficult to climb even by civilians. Below, the valley turned into foothills and wet forests full of ferns and slugs, with tall coniferous trees ill suited to tree hopping.

Instead, Kyubi and Hanabi ran along the cool forest floor, darting around immense craggy barked trees and hopping over clusters of ferns and bushes. Hanabi found she enjoyed the run, the freedom of movement, but quickly lost the feeling as she remembered she was following at Kyubi's orders. The sun came up as they ran, though the forest still remained shrouded in gloom, but that was no hindrance at all to the pair.

About an hour later Kyubi paused suddenly, with Hanabi landing right beside him, looking around curiously. They were at the tilted base of a splintered off tree, presumably the result of a doton jutsu many years previously, since the earth had been torn up all around it and partially covered the upper side of the tree. There must have been an incredible force behind the jutsu, as the tree was more than twenty feet thick, and the top had been torn off and tossed to the side a hundred yards away.

Kyubi raised one eye at her.

Quickly activating her byakugan, Hanabi looked around, wondering what she'd missed, and found three people, presumably ninja, trapped in some kind of tiny chakra cage hidden in the hollow under the great tree's roots. All three were male, two with beards and one without, and were dressed in clothes that left no clue as to their origin. They were still armed with various weapons, most notably a kusarigama in the case of the clean shaven one, but they were wedged in so tightly they could barely move.

"Ah," she said quietly.

"You need to be quicker on the uptake," Kyubi chided her, even as he dissolved the web of solid chakra keeping the three ninja captive. One of the bearded ones was in a position to immediately leap at him, a desperate plan to distract him long enough for the others to escape, but he literally vaporized in an instant as Kyubi casually reached through the lingering cloud of human vapor to grab each of the others by an ankle. Turning and bringing his arms over his head as he did so, Kyubi spun and slammed them with bone breaking force into the earth outside the hollow.

"**STAY,**" he ordered, and the two were unable to move. Casually, he fell into a cross legged seat on the chest of the younger, clean shaven ninja, and waved Hanabi towards the upturned back of the other.

Hanabi sat, staring back at the Kyubi with an impassive expression.

After a brief moment, he laughed and shook his head. "**Be careful when fighting fools, lest ye become a fool as well.**" In a more normal voice, he continued. "Too much time with you humans has corrupted me. I assumed, when I first heard of your activities here, that you were hoping to postpone payment on your debt to me." He snorted. "Well, since I've already got this prepared, shall we take a meal together?" His hand plunged into the chest of the ninja he sat on with a wet, gristly crack of bone and cartilage shattering. Hands capable of powers beyond anything human casually pulled out the still beating heart, tearing the vessels in two as they stretched beyond their length.

Hanabi stared.

Without pomp or ceremony, Kyubi cleaned off the gore from the outside of the still strongly pulsing heart. One finger lengthened and transformed into a claw as wicked as any knife, and carved a thin, spiraling strip of muscle tissue away, much like peeling an apple, being careful to include the node that generated the signals that kept the heart beating. The resulting strip of heart twitched and contracted, momentarily going limp only to draw itself back into a tight spiral, the seat of life and final chakra center of the dying ninja.

"**Eat**," Kyubi said, handing it to Hanabi.

Hanabi didn't cringe, but hesitated to reach for the morsel. Although far from squeamish, she had no desire to actually eat human flesh, as the Kyubi did so enthusiastically. However, at the Kyubi's look, she realized that this was no casual breakfast. There was the significance of ritual here, powered by life and blood, and she knew that Kyubi was well within his oath to demand this of her.

Her own heart thudding hard and her breath coming shallow and quick, Hanabi took the thin, small strip of heart and quickly popped it in her mouth, swallowing without chewing.

Kyubi nodded, satisfied, and took a large bite of the remaining heart as if it was an apple. Blood smeared onto the sides of his mouth and cheeks. Blood like the stain on Hanabi's fingertips.

Perversely, she was almost disappointed that there didn't seem to be any noticeable change. A feeling, chakra, anything. Though the act of cannibalism did sit heavy in her stomach, there didn't seem to be anything else happening. There should have been the sound of angels crying at least.

"These three humans were sent here to kill or kidnap you," Kyubi said bluntly.

Hanabi glanced at her erstwhile seat, startled.

"Yes, our contract has been noticed. My enemy moves against me, though he knows not what game I play, so he attempts to discover your nature, to use you against me." The blond man smiled, showing teeth too sharp to be human.

Hanabi got a sense of great personal satisfaction emanating from her host and benefactor.

"Now his plan has failed, and the only question remaining is… what are you going to do with that ninja?"

Hanabi thought about that for a moment. "I suppose the logical thing to do would be to turn him over to torture and interrogation to find out all he knows."

"Ah, but I have already discovered all of his secrets. Will you kill him to spare yourself the trouble of taking him back to your village?"

The young girl gave him a flat, disapproving look. "Are you going to tell me everything you found out about him?"

The blond laughed, the whisker marks on his cheek crinkling with a wide smile. "Always doing what you're supposed to." He quickly ate the rest of the heart he still clutched in his hand, jaw stretching wide and his throat distending to accommodate it. "Well, I suppose that's enough breakfast for today, I'll save the rest of this one for lunch."

Hanabi stood as Kyubi fell forward onto all fours, quickly growing, expanding away from her until he was a nine tailed fox fifteen feet high. Scooping up the now cooling corpse of the other ninja in his mouth, he paused, his red, slitted eyes boring into hers.

"**I'll be watching.**" And then he was gone.

With a gasp of sudden effort and surprise, the man Hanabi had been sitting on found himself free of the Kyubi's demonic will, able to move again.

The ex-Hyuga was faster, however, and was able to paralyze him and seal all his chakra with a few swift blows to the back of his neck and body, then methodically set to securing him for transport.

The Kyubi might already know all he wanted about the plots she found herself caught up in, but Hanabi needed answers.

Madara was moving against the Kyubi, and by extension, her. Soon, her debt would be called due.

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AN: Not much to say. Working and suchlike leaves little time for writing, so my production is slow, but I still put a few paragraphs on this or that now and then. Either Ask Me or Ignorance is going to be next to see a whole new chapter. Unless it's People Lie. One of the three. This is my most experiemental peice where I deliberately change the way I write and the tone of the piece, and it usually leaves me kind of weird in the head for a few days. Reviews, as always, requested.


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